Man ‘made over 4,500 indecent calls to children’

A MAN who was married with four children made thousands of indecent calls to children as young as eight across Britain pretending to be a doctor carrying out sexual health checks, a court heard yesterday.

John Phillips is known to have made some 4,554 calls from telephone kiosks near his workplace to youngsters’ homes the length and breadth of Britain, Leicester Crown Court was told.

The well-spoken businessmen asked them personal questions and convinced some to strip and perform sex acts on themselves.

If the girls and boys refused, the 65-year-old threatened to take them through the tests in front of classmates at school.

He was eventually caught when the family of a victim complained to police.

Detectives recorded some 584 “blocks” of calls made from the Gateshead area between November 2004 and February 2006. One session in a kiosk lasted for nearly four hours.

Phillips used phone directories to target children from ethnic minorities, apparently because they would be more respectful and less likely to challenge an authority figure.

Phillips phoned the home of one 16-year-old girl 137 times.